In website marketing search engines can be a webmasters best friend or worst enemy. When the site is optimized for the right keyword and marketed correctly search engines can bring tons of residual traffic with very little additional effort. However without the right knowledge and experience it’s more likely that your SEO attempts will end in mere frustration. At this point many people simply resort to paying Google to post a link to their site in a contextual ad when a user searches for their keyword. This is called Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC), and it has it’s advantages, however it requires a steady budget and a sound strategy o be implemented successfully.
Successful SEO also requires a sound strategy, but no budget is needed to optimize a site. So you have a dilemma, you can invest the time needed to learn SEO or you can invest money testing PPC campaigns. In general, SEO is a better option for new webmasters, as it gives them a chance to learn the ins and outs of how the search engines work. While it is tempting to simply pay a few cents for each targeted visitor your site receives, PPC should not be attempted by anyone that does not already understand search engine optimization, as this could result in a financial loss and a lot of failed expectations.